


bet you kiss your knuckles (right before they touch my cheek)

by ferryboatsandbowie



Series: manifest destiny [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Mad Max: Fury Road, F/F, F/M, Mentions of Pregnancy, Mentions of Rape, Mentions of miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-05 16:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4186599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferryboatsandbowie/pseuds/ferryboatsandbowie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somewhere, lost in the desolate hellscape of a world time forgot, lies a place known to few. These are the Wives who know all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. hard like a rock

**Author's Note:**

> I left a showing of Mad Max a couple weeks ago, still super salty about the finale. This is also what happens when I don't have wifi for a week.
> 
> The title is after Halsey’s Trouble which you can check out on the accompanying soundtrack.
> 
> Here’s my brainchild: each piece within the collection, exactly 100 words.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mockingbird. /mɑk·ɪŋˌbɜrd/  
> a long-tailed thrushlike songbird with grayish plumage, noted for its mimicry of the calls and songs of other birds

 I. 

Barbara. She was his Mockingbird. The first of his Wives.

She remembers each of his weddings. And yet… she could barely place her own.

She’s sure she wore white. That he fed her and called her _Wife_ before they disappeared into his quarters.

But she’d always worn white… He’d always fed her...

How was that any different from all the other times he’s taken her?

There’s nothing from before. Nothing from after. With each marriage, a memory dies with it.

Precious was her first Wife. Then Chroí. Daisy came after. Baby was the last.

Bird prays she’ll stay that way.

II. 

To Kara, his Baby. She cleaned her up. Poor thing wouldn’t let anyone else touch her, she was shaking so terribly. Bird tried to coax some answers from the girl, but she couldn’t remember a thing from her life before. She could only hold her as she cried.

To his Daisy. She told her things. She told her everything. Daisy listened. He returned her the next morning with bruises running down her arms. She wore the most defiant look Bird had ever seen… Her husband’s face was set in a furious rage behind his mask. It was a beautiful sight.

III. 

To Raina, his Chroí. She dressed her in the finest fabrics he sent for. Raina went on and on, cursing his name. She swore she’d outlive him just to spit on his grave. Bird held her to that as she braided flowers in her wild hair. She stared at her sister, eyes wide and serious. “Oh, I will,” she promised.

To Jemma, his Precious. They were together until the bitter end when he tore her from his new Wife’s white knuckled grip. Bird collapsed on the floor in a broken sob as he took her. Her Wife. _Hers_. Never his.

IV. 

She tells him once he should stop.

“Baby is the last.” That’s what she tells him. “No more.”

He only sighs, breaking her apart from the Wives.

Nodding to the door, she could almost see his jaw tighten with the order on his lips. “Come, Wife.”

It wasn’t a question. He never asks, never wants for anything. She follows without a word, even after she’s pregnant. He says he likes the company… Nothing about his need to see that she doesn’t try anything reckless.

He calls her Mockingbird because she sings. This is true. He also calls her his favorite. This is the lie.

V. 

He likes what she does for him that the others refuse to. He likes how she talks to him. How she carries his sons, his heirs. He likes how they are together behind the walls of the Vault, how they fit. 

He might almost love it, but never her. 

She’s not sure he has favorites. He’s softer with her than he is with the others, but she knows it doesn’t mean a thing. There was no use predicting his moods.

He runs hot. He runs cold.

He’d have to know the thing to love it.

And they are not things.


	2. cold like stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Precious. /preʃ.əs/  
> (of an object, substance, or resource) of great value; not to be wasted or treated carelessly.

I.

Jemma was his Precious.

She knew this already. His Treasures… That’s what he calls his Wives. But for him, she was his Precious Stone. He found her one day and decided she was his, her eyes hard as rocks but deep as the sea.

“Like Malachite.” His voice was sharp, she could hear the smile behind it. “Let’s hope you’re not toxic.”

Then she was taken to the bathhouse. Jemma was so clean by the time they were through with her. Shiny and new, polished and beautiful. Just a girl of seventeen… Years before she was ready to marry anyone.

II.

She has a million questions.

Who are you. What am I doing here. Where is my mother. Why are you doing this.

No answers come. No one does.

No one to fight for her, nowhere to run. But run she did. She ran and she ran.

He catches her. He marries her. He beds her. He buries her.

And when he’s finished with her, he puts her back in the box… The Vault. He’s never thrown away the key, though. Not even after she tries to kill him.

Barbara sees to that, always protecting her. Her Wife. Her first.

III.

She rips the mask off his face when they’re alone their first night. He laughs off the attempt. He doesn’t even need the damned thing.

“If you wanted to see me, you only needed to ask.”

She can see the viciousness in his smile. His scar, barely visible from the moonlight. She can hear his voice clearly, unobstructed by the hollow echo of the mask.

“Better to ask forgiveness than permission,” she snaps.

“Precious,” he warns.

He catches her wrists and holds them over her head, nuzzling his bleeding face against her neck… her cheek… It’s a warning. A message.

IV.

He nips and he sucks at places she won’t be able to conceal.

She thinks of Barbara, furious she would’ve taken such a risk.

“I’m sorry,” she would say.

“He could have _killed_ you!”

“I just thought...”

“You’d leave me alone with him,” she would cry. “You’re all I have.”

“No.” She shakes beneath him, thinking only of her tears. “I’m sorry.”

Jemma hisses as he ran his stubble across her breast, his touch burning hotter than the desert sun. She closes her eyes and imagines she’s back in the Vault… Back in her box.

“I love you.”

“I know.”

V.

She often finds herself thinking of the Wives. The bathhouse. When he called her Malachite all those years ago. What life was like before she’d seen his face…

She thinks to herself, and not for the first time, just how wrong he is.

He’s a monster, so wrong about so many things. About _everything_. But before her husband’s death, she’d make him see: she _was_ toxic. She was filled with poison, blessed with beauty and rage. She’d have him willingly choking on the taste of her and then he’d know.

He would know before he died.

They are not things.


	3. white like a diamond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chroí. /kree/  
> the central or innermost part of something.

 

I.

Cuisle mo Chroí. Pulse of my heart…

He calls her this because she knows just when he’s going to die.

More often than not, she’s just Chroí to him. He can’t be bothered with the full moniker. It reminds him of his own mortality, she thinks.

She wears the name like a tag, itching and chafing at the very heart of her… They all do.

Bird’s trapped. Precious is objectified. Daisy’s ornamental. Baby is shamed and infantilized.

It’s the kind of pain that doesn’t have to be seen to be felt. That he can’t order away… As if he would.

 

II.

Raina intrigues him in a way her sisters do not.

She speaks in tongues and riddles and he can’t bear to part with any of it, the things she whispers in his ear when he pulls her out. He craves the Sight like a wandering monk, starved for scraps of manna.

The words woven on her lips are the true power she has over him.

Her words and his unborn sprog.

When she told him the news, he was more than pleased. Not for his Warlord Junior. No. Their sons would serve as Oracles of Valhalla for generations to come.

 

III.

“But what if they’re girls,” she whispers in the darkness.

“Are you asking or telling?”

She remains silent and prays for a dreamless sleep. They’re all nightmares anyways. Nightmares shrouded in a prophecy of young women, beautiful even as they cried. Just like her sisters.

She can’t concentrate when he’s stroking at her womb like that. Shrugging away from him, he tightens a touch. Not enough to hurt, just enough to remind her where she is.

“What is it?”

“No.” She shakes her head, not trusting her voice. “It’s nothing.”

“Tell me,” he insists, softer than she’d ever thought possible.

 

IV.

Turning, she faces him with tears in her eyes, same as the girls in her visions. “Angels.”

He doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe… He just brings her back to the Vault without another word. Barbara takes her sister to bed and soothes her hair, something their husband would never do.

“They were beautiful… so beautiful,” she tells her.

“They’re our daughters, aren’t they?” she reasons. “Of course they will be.”

“I’m afraid for them. What’s going to _—_ ”

“Shh…” She kisses her forehead thoughtfully. “They won’t be Warlords. They won’t be Wives.”

“What will they become?”

Bird shrugs. “Whatever they want.”

 

V.

She whispers in her ear until sleep finally claims them for the night.

_We are not things…_

She trusts Barbara. She _loves_ Barbara. Even though she knows just how much it’s gonna hurt later.

She’s seen everything. The escape from the Citadel. The Imperator. The War Boy. Hunter. She dreams of Barbara dying in their husband’s arms.

His screams haunt her.

She almost wants to warn them. But this was her burden. Bird was too precious to know. Besides that, she believes her. It didn’t matter what she did or didn’t see, Raina knows the truth.

They are not things.


	4. black like coal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daisy. /deɪ.zi/  
> Old English _day's eye_ (because the flower opens in the morning and closes at night)

 

I.

Daisy… His Desert Flower. His Daisy.

She’s never seen one outside these walls and she never will. Never mind the world’s desolate, she’d burn the thing before giving into the name.

She thinks her mother gave it to her as a baby... Or maybe it was her father. Her husband knew him, she never did. The thought made her hate it all the more.

When he wants her, he gets her.

 _I want never gets_ , she remembers the nuns taught her as a child. He manages, but Bird explains that early on.

On her wedding day, she gave her all.

 

II.

She tells her so many things.

“He won’t love you.”

“Love is for your sisters and your children.”

“You fight him, understand? Remember this.”

She doesn't want to fight. She’s spent so long fighting… But she refuses to be his Daisy.

So she does what she has to. Whenever he chooses her, she fights him to the last. Just like that first night.

It starts with the snap of her name. If she doesn’t answer, he’ll go after her himself. Daisy drags her feet as he takes her to bed, kicking her legs when he tries to pin her down.

 

III.

She rolls under the bed as a last ditch effort of stalling him. Depending how tired he is, he might even decide to leave her down there.

She can always tell the nights he’ll fight her. It’s in the way he says her name. And there are so few ways to say it. He can bark. _Daisy_. He can breathe. _Daisy_. He can grunt. _Daisy_.

And she hates every single one of them.

She wants something infinite, something bigger than him. She’d rather be Skye.

She tells Raina first. “My name is Skye.”

She smiles and touches her face. “Skye.”

 

IV.

She tells Barbara last, waiting until she’s at least sitting down… Bird towers over her on a good day and Skye needs whatever advantage she can get.

“Barbara,” she prompts her. She looks over with that tired smile with a hand on her growing belly. She’s such a mother already. “My name is Skye.”

She doesn’t even blink. She takes Skye’s hand and brings it next to hers to touch the baby.

“Skye,” she says softly. Skye could feel the baby kick under her fingers and she takes a breath. “You can’t tell him, you know.”

She nods. “I know.”

 

V.

“I’ll call you whatever you want,” she adds. “We’re not his property… Not his things.”

She blinks away the tears stinging at her eyes… Silly that this is the straw to break the camel's back after everything.

“I know,” she says again.

“Do you?” Her eyes were searching. “I want to hear you say it.”

Skye buries her face in her hands. “Bird _—_ ”

“Say it.”

“Stop, okay? I get it.”

“Please,” she insists.

She obliges her. Not because she’s the favorite. Not even because she loves her. But because it was the absolute fucking truth.

They are not things.


	5. cut like a jewel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baby. /beɪ.bi/  
> a thing regarded with affection or familiarity

I.

Kara was his Baby.

It’s some cruel reminder, his name for her. She’s never once had an heir… Not to term, anyways.

Would she even want to? Would she even know how?

She’s seen the others and the thought is so tempting… The cravings. The names. The hope that he’ll let them be mothers.

No. That wasn’t her.

Kara has only known the sick. The pain. The harsh disappointment in his eyes when he found out she lost his heirs. They come too early to be his son or her daughter when she loses them… just blood and bitter resentment.

II.

Kara does not love her husband. She doesn’t hate him, either. Was this so strange?

She thinks of the others… She should be relieved that he pays her so little attention. The relief she felt came from shelter. Food in her belly. Kept company. Here she was safe, safe as could be.

She couldn’t remember feeling so safe, not that she had many memories to speak of before she came to the Citadel. Just feelings. Too cold nights. Too hot days. Too starved to move… But if she didn’t move, she’d starve.

She had been alone.

Here, she has sisters.

III.

She was new. It had barely been two years since he’d married her. She was the baby.

She wonders if there will be more Wives. If she’ll be the last.

Bird says she will be. She swears it. “Only a little while longer,” she says, never explaining her meaning.

Kara was sure she had something in the works. If she couldn’t say, it’s probably for her own good… It had to be. Why else would she lie if not to protect her sisters?

The thought worries her but not enough to press. There’s enough on her mind. Everyone has something.

IV.

Precious dreams of her revenge. Chroí has her visions. Daisy with her name… Baby has her tears.

She hates feeling useless to them so she seeks out their husband for the night. Better her than someone else.

He leads her to his bedroom without a thought and she dances for him because he’s tired and bored. His fingers dig into her so there’s no chance she’d leave.

She feels him fast asleep beside her and wonders if the others know… What’s Bird planning?

“You think too loudly,” he states roughly. “Go to sleep or I’ll give you something to do.”

V.

She shuts her eyes in a vain attempt of quieting her mind. He sighs over her and kisses under her ear.

“I’m sorry.” She trembles under his touch and forces herself to lie still. “I’m sorry…”

“Sleep,” he mutters.

She does. The alternative is too much. It _hurts_. She can’t go through that again. No one should.

If Bird says she’s the last, then she is. If Bird says she won’t die here, she believes her.

Bird also says they are not things. She knows she’s alive. She eats and bleeds and feels.

So she must not be a thing.


End file.
